The Super8 material that has been stored in a private archive since 1982 is a conundrum, showing art, demolished buildings, and squatted houses in early 1980s West Berlin. A so-called Artificial Intelligence is consulted to explore the connections between the images. Interestingly, it comes up with references to the ancient capital of the Median Empire and later royal residence of the Achaemenids. We also learn surprising things about the significance of red turtleneck jumpers for gay emancipation and discover the functions of broom and hose. Accompanied by a confusing sound collage, the graffiti on the walls of a much-described city point to an exciting subcultural tradition. A young man looks into the camera. It is the artist Gerhard Faulhaber.

We don’t see where they are at first, we just hear one of the two men speaking in voice-over, in Hebrew, the Israeli who can’t sleep while his Palestinian boyfriend tosses and turns beside him in bed, plagued by nightmares, everything is more heightened by night. As the speaker makes clear, they’re at home in Paris, their dog nestled between them. But his account only touches on that in passing, it’s more about trying to make sense of the political situation back home: a war, an ongoing catastrophe so terrible it’s impossible to truly describe. Maybe any such attempt is futile, but what else can one do?
The speaker’s turn of phrase is formidable, his words spiral and turn around on themselves, talking of horrors, protests, discrimination, but also of family, intimacy, the memory of joy. The images fold back on themselves as well, shuttling through the dark apartment but also leaving it for the world outside, metro stations, indeterminate landscapes, streets in snow. They also work with the contrast between light and dark, although darkness mostly dominates, too. Yet there is still talk of waking up in the morning, of new dawns, however intangible or impossible to reach, and the images of the bed by daylight and the man waking up in it carry infinite tenderness. What else is left to hold on to than that?

Anyone who enters the hardware store in the 900-soul community of Lumpkin in rural southwestern Georgia will find, in addition to tools, animal feed and seeds, a number of unexpected things. Kellie’s small, privately run hardware store is more than a store, it is a lifeline for the region: supply depot, gossip station, refuge. Kellie has a kind word for everyone, employs bored teenagers from the neighbourhood, cheers up lonely seniors, and adopts stray dogs. She meets everyone with warmth, patience, and dry wit. She comments only briefly – and after closing time, of course – on the fact that as a queer woman in a traditionally Republican corner of the USA she does not always have it easy, especially not in a job where dealing with DIY mansplainers is her daily bread.
Kathrin Seward and Ole Elfenkaemper observe this woman of conviction’s everyday life and have great fun immersing themselves in the details of these spaces and the absurd and entertaining intricacies of the social interactions. This very special universe almost makes us forget that next to the atmosphere in the store, open in every respect, there is also quite a different America that is not about friendliness and helpfulness, but about selfishness, aggression, and discrimination.

The dew drips promisingly from the leaves. Ayla wakes up in a beautifully flowering, lush landscape. A new mountain range arises in the distance. The summits: a smiling woman’s head. Ayla sets out towards it. The hills are the supportive nipples, the downy hair on the forearms is the grass she tenderly strokes with her fingers. When she sees a small dense forest on the horizon, she knows where she must go to find the ultimate fulfilment.
Luma Flôres shows Ayla’s self-exploration as an exquisite sensual and tender journey in intense colours. The discovery of her own body and lust are intertwined with the discovery of another, also female body. The intense sensuality remains metaphorical but vivid to the end – for example, when Ayla discovers her lover’s lap as a natural fountain in which she first dips her fingers and then her whole head and body. When the two are at last united in the water and sleep with each other, the animation changes from concrete representation to abstraction – which in turn bursts in the sky like fireworks. Flôres resolves her metaphorical dance only in the final moments of the film: The two women kiss, drift on the water. The fine art of love, but also the simplest, most natural thing in the world.

The “Intersection – It’s Political” project asks how structures of discrimination can be made tangible – especially for those who have not (yet) experienced discrimination themselves. That is precisely the purpose of an interactive smartphone game distinguished by two qualities: It is competitive – and it is unfair. Some players start with privileges, others with handicaps, depending on which character they are assigned. In the film, this game serves as a starting point, visualisation, and reality check for a group of six people who are actively committed to fighting to identify social injustice and discrimination and publicly opposing them.
The exchange between those six around the table makes it clear how ubiquitous racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobia, and transphobia are. And that, at a time when right-wing parties are growing stronger across the globe and marginalised groups are denied rights, it is all the more important to work against inequality not only in one’s own bubble, derided as “woke”, but also to influence the equally often quoted “middle of society”. Questions of how to reach this important, but often sluggish mass, of language and identity in the discourse about discrimination are just as much part of the discussion as strategies to protect themselves from frustration and burnout.

Karla is a dreamer, Karla is charismatic, and Karla is trans. She grows up with her parents in the small Mexican town of Tepoztlán. She loves to wear make-up and dress up. But sometimes, when the world is too much for her, she hides in her room for hours. Fortunately, Karla has friends and a family who support, often understand and sometimes challenge her.
Trans filmmaker Kani Lapuerta followed the daily life and transition of his protagonist over a period of eight years. The result is a colourful, playful and political coming-of-age story told from a trans perspective. Together, Karla and Kani create a cinematic space where their fantasy is as important as their identity – and where both flow into each other. The title of the film refers to a possible gender-neutral form of the Spanish term “niños” that also includes non-binary, trans and gender-fluid children. “Niñxs” is a touching, encouraging film about childhood, creativity and self-empowerment – and a compelling plea for a world in which everyone is simply allowed to be themselves.

“Today, we’re raising funds for the 206th Territorial Defence Brigade”, Diva Monroe announces at a drag show in a Kyiv basement club. Whether on the front line or by civilian actions: A lot of people from the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ community are fighting against the Russian attacks – many of them even before the 2022 invasion. It would be understandable to flee from war and discrimination. For a long time, there was next to no social acceptance for queers in the Ukraine. But since Kremlin propaganda no longer reaches Kyiv, things have improved. That is what Olga Gibelinda’s film narrates via the example of three drag queens: Monroe, who remembers the empowerment of the Maidan protests and has worked for television and as an influencer since. Aura, at that time still siding with the pro-Russian government, today serving in the army under Commander-in-Chief Zelensky. And Marlen, who suffered abuse as a trans woman in the past and spreads joy on stage today.
The film establishes a poignant contrast between the show world and the private lives of the drag queens, while leaving space for their political demands. These include the call for the recognition of queer partnerships at this time to give relatives of those killed or wounded in action equal legal claims.

Venice in February, empty alleys and squares, hardly a boat in sight on the lagoon. These are moving scenes without humans, without life, which are gradually charged with emotions, transformed into atmospheric pictures of a relationship that could never be. We never see the lovers, do not learn their names. And yet the film is deeply intimate as we follow an offscreen first-person narrative.
It is about the game of closeness and distance. One of them withdraws after sex, unable to stand by his queer desire in public. The narrator in turn does not feel that the term “boyfriend” applies to him. The memories take us back to the first kiss, the first blowjobs, accompanied by shots of Amsterdam that seem to be sizzling. In a monologue, the first-person narrator recalls his emotional states – from the end to the beginning. At last summery shots of a lake. And a new encounter.